I clicked on this link because the title was originally:
Europe is a cool place to visit, right?
and I like Europe. Only to find out it was begging thread from mommy so her fourteen year old can have four thousand dollars to visit Europe. Good god are you freaking kidding me with this one? You actually expect people here to give you their hard earned money so your ninth grader can have a nice vacation? WTF? Have you no sense of perspective whatsoever?
Forget Europe. Bring your daughter to a child’s cancer ward or a homeless shelter. Cheaper and far more educational.
When I was in high school I had the opportunity to go to Spain for a while, but my mom absolutely forbid it, because get this, my teacher was a male. :rolleyes: But they could have afforded it, it wasn’t going to be them begging other people.
I don’t really have a problem with the mods approving it. I don’t think they should be judging the merits of any particular plea, to be honest, or they’ll be accused of favoritism. Just let them approve it in their way and then we can decide whether we want to contribute or not.
When my daughter was 14 she had the opportunity for a class trip to the Vimy memorial in France for the 90th anniversary ceremony of the Battle of Vimy Ridge.
She desperately wanted to go so we made a deal - we would pay 75% of the costs if she raised, through work and school fund raisers the rest of the costs. We even allowed that her father could pay the 25% but she had to talk to him about it, we wouldn’t.
She failed to raise the 25% required and in fact wasn’t really close. Her father as predicted contributed zero.
So she didn’t go. And as soon as she got to University she saved her money and spent her first spring break on a solo trip to Paris.
The real thing she got out of the (not) trip was an appreciation for the cost of things and the power of earning your own money.
This is even worse than all those people who ask us for money to fund their holiday volunteer for two weeks in an exotic foreign country vacations. I seriously want to ask “What the hell are you thinking?”
I did a school trip to Europe when I was sixteen… After I had mowed lawns and did odd jobs all year to pay for it. If $1500 is doable for a teenager in 1986, $4000 should be in 2014.
Its a reflection of the culture I was raised in, but I absolutely hate myself every time I have to ask other people for money. I will suffer through a lot and exhaust every single option before I start to beg from anybody. My friends are the same, and the flipside is that when asked for help I give it immediately because I know the request wasn’t made lightly.
So frivolous requests like the linked thread are just abhorrent to me. I simply wouldn’t have the bare faced cheek to ever ask strangers for money simply so a kid can have a holiday. Just how utterly clueless do you have to be to consider that an acceptable thing to do?
y’know, this is no different than the local high school (marching) band having a fundraiser for a trip.
and the nice thing about “crowdfunding” is that if you don’t agree with what someone’s asking for money for, you can- get this- ignore it. if enough people agree with you, they won’t raise any money and they’ll get the message.
I’m sorry, no. Ignoring will not get the message across to this clueless person that her request – and the mere idea of asking complete strangers to pay for your child to have a luxury – is absolutely ridiculous.
For that we need public shaming and I for one am willing to be of service.
I think this is another instance of internet-enabled chutzpah.
Apparently, a lot of people are using GoFundMe to solicit donations for vacations and whatnots. And as usual, I’m torn. I’m at that age where a lot of my contemporaries are getting married and having babies. They too are soliciting “donations”, using shower and wedding invitations as the vehicle. So I can see how it would be tempting for someone else to try to get in on the gift-giving action.
But at least when you give someone a wedding gift or a baby shower gift, you’re donating to something bigger than that one person. And you usually are “given” a party in exchange for your gift.
I went on a school field trip to Europe when I was 15. This of course was before the days of GoFundMe, but I have no doubt that if it had been an option, my mother would have made me fundraise that way. What she made me do was write letters to all my aunts and beg for money. I wasn’t close to them at all–which made me feel guilty–but they did give me money (probably because they felt guilty too). In exchange, I sent all of them postcards while I was overseas.
But my mother also made me hustle. I had to get a job the summer before, and that job was a pretty tough one for a 15-year-old. I saved up the majority of the money myself. The donations I received covered a small amount, and then my parents threw in the rest.
But that trip didn’t cost $2462 (the value of $4000 back in 1993). It was more like half of that. Ain’t no way my school would have organized a trip that was so expensive. Not with the average income level of the student body.
She’s not even making the kid do the begging - she’s doing it for her! At least, if the kid was doing it, she’d learn something. Even if it’s only that it’s uncomfortable to beg.
And I’m not sure this is a school trip, the Mom refers to ‘the group’, but I’m not seeing how it’s not just a group of friends, to be honest.
I went on a trip to Europe with my youth orchestra, and had to earn all the money for it myself. Though I was a little older than the 14-year-old in the thread. And, shall we say, a little less academically successful.
I don’t know why the girl’s academic accomplishments were played up in the thread. Do more “successful” kids deserve internet-stranger-funded trips more than academically average kids or something?
Also, my trip only cost about half the money of the trip in that thread. Though it may be because my orchestra itself helped raise some of the needed money (through things like fundraising concerts, not through asking random internet people to donate money.)
The last kid who showed up at my door to raise funds offered me a useful little book with discounts from local area businesses. She got twenty bucks. I got a pile of good coupons including one for my local area supermarket that saved us $25 on a grocery bill. That’s how you engage in fundraising. Not like this.
I’ve been to Europe about a dozen times, but the first time wasn’t until I was 49. Hopefully, that kid won’t have to wait that long . . . and if she pays for it herself, she’ll get more out of it.
One of my cousins gave his daughter a 3-month around-the-world cruise for her high school graduation. He couldn’t understand why she came home totally bored.